From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Choate To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Cc: , In-Reply-To: <1f517bfbcb1b8d7f5681324bad8fbef6@plan9.escet.urjc.es> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [9fans] Re: Future of Plan9 Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:31:28 -0600 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 589d2782-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Fco.J.Ballesteros wrote: > We have gone through this before. And we ain't done yet, by a long shot. > I'm using it for my real world work, as others do. BFD, that is -not- the measure of success in Open Source. User base is (just as in real world commercial software). > Could we stop discussing philosophy and get back to system > issues? You draw a specious distinction. One can't exist without the other. If you don't want to participate in the discussion then don't (I believe Plan 9 has a 'd' key like most other OS'es). Stay stuck in the compiler telling yourself the same old same old, that's your choice. Nobody makes you reply to my submissions to this list other than your own bruised ego. The reality is that the Plan 9 community, as I've said before, is inbread and really not effective at developing a -thriving- user community. You can write all the nifty code you want, if nobody uses it you've wasted your effort. A user community equals success, period. After being available for two(!!!) years some very important observations can be made about the (in)viability of the Plan 9 developer community as it stands now. - Not a single other user group exists (it's ok, Hangar 18 has folks in several cities around the US). -NO- other efforts are extant outside of Hangar 18. After two(!!!) years that's an embarassing statement to make, even for me. It didn't take but a little over a year from the first time Linus released Linux until the first user groups started. I have a hard time explaining in a rational, reasonable way to people who have a interest in using Plan 9 why this is. It in fact is one of the major turn-offs to get people to even try it. People who are technically aware of the history of Unix and Plan 9 generally walk away in shock. - There are no(!!!) introductory documents for new users (don't worry, Hangar 18 is working on that now. - I've yet to see an actual article in -any- of the commercial or Open Source technical or user community literature (it's Ok, we're working on that too). - The boot process is still one of the most aggravating issues for any new Plan 9 user (we're working on that also). - The commercial outlet for Plan 9 has zero, nada, nil, null programs for fostering user communities. The best we've received to date is some snide comment by one of the reps about free t-shirts if somebody writes code. As if getting people to use that code isn't at least as important (especially if you want people to buy gobs of your product - 90% of all users are just that, users; not developers). I had hoped to address this issue by forming a LLC but the poor economy has dashed that because the other participants in the fledgling effort simply don't have the resources at this time so we're going to have to put that one off for the time being. - Plan 9 is a -distributed- OS, using it on your own personal desktop is like driving a Indy car around a Malibu Grand Prix track (no affiliation or insult intended to Malibu). Not a single resource exists outside of Hangar 18 to foster the growth and development of distributed resources for public access via Open Source efforts. - I've made two offers to public comment about Plan 9 events to get users to appear at events where Plan 9 was supposedly to be 'demonstrated'. That's a pitifull responce and in and of itself justifies heaps of abuse on the development community. The offer stands open to any individual or organization that is interested in promoting wider use of Plan 9, I will do whatever I can do help. - There is no effort outside of Hangar 18 to create a Open Source public access point into relevant resources. Instead we get an endless stream of "Try this site..." instead of a more reasoned, and rational Plan 9 approach of attaching those resources to a common name space and having them appear automagically to -all- users in tandem. What a joke, the Plan 9 developers don't even understand how to use their own creation effectively. Instead they use the same old same old, treating Plan 9 as if it were just another varient of *nix. - There are -no- efforts outside of Hangar 18 to foster the use of Plan 9 and wireless networking to really demonstrate the power of distributed computing (to quote Rheingold - what happens when that PDA in your hand is the front end to a tera-flop distributed computing resource?). If we follow the Plan 9 development community we'll never know. Plan 9 has the power to give us that -TODAY-. What a sad list of failures of the Plan 9 development community. And it would take such little effort to do something about each and every one of them. Plan 9 has such promise and to think it will die because the people who create it lack the vision to understand how to really use it. Of course part of the problem is that many of the developers have never really embraced the concept of Open Source and what that means to them individually, let alone having any interest in distributed computing outside of getting their name plastered on some source tree somewhere that will be admired by some small closed community. Bruised ego indeed. Sigh. Hangar 18 may be slow and poor, but at least we act. -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------